Indian Maoist rebels call strike over leader's killing

Nov 28, 2011, 6:58 GMT

New Delhi - Maoist militants in India called a two-day nationwide strike in protest at last week's killing of one of their leaders, a news report said Monday.

The rebels said businesses and educational institutions would shut and they would disrupt traffic on Sunday and December 5, their spokesman, Abhay, was quoted as saying by The Hindu newspaper.

The effect of the strike was likely to be felt in Maoist-dominated areas in the eastern state of West Bengal as well as other states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, the paper said.

Koteshwar Rao, number three in the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), was killed Thursday by police in West Bengal after more than three decades on the run.

Abhay claimed Rao was 'brutally murdered' and accused security forces of staging his death to look like open combat.

One of the group's ideologues, Varvara Rao, told the paper that the rebel had in fact been picked up a day or two earlier, tortured and then shot.

The Home Ministry said Rao, 54, was killed in a gunfight with the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force.

The rebels, operating in some of India's poorest regions, say they are fighting for the rights of tribal people and the landless.

Indian leaders have described the left-wing insurgency as the greatest internal security threat facing India.

Nearly 5,500 civilians, security personnel and rebels have been killed in violence associated with the movement since 2005, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal website.